# Sherlock Holmes Quote of the Day



## squeeze left (Jun 28, 2006)

Hello all,

I've been working my way through "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" and one of the great things about it is all the gratuitous tobacco references. I've been meaning to share some of these with you all, and I thought I'd start with this one from _The Man With the Twisted Lip_:

"[Holmes] was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless. . . ."

"[When I awoke] I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. the pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night."

. . . (case solved!) . . .

"[Said the policeman] 'I wish I knew how you reach your results.'"

"I reached this one," said my friend, "by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall be just in time for breakfast."

-_Sir Arthur Conan Doyle_


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## JacksonCognac (Nov 12, 2007)

awesome quotes - I need to read this book badly.


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## SUOrangeGuy (Feb 22, 2006)

Sherlock sure enjoyed some nasty tobacco. Drying out the dottle to smoke later u

I bought the complete works cheap on eBay and read them all last summer. Great timeless stories.

There is one where he actually uses tobacco ash to solve the mystery. No hints though.

Here is a version of the set I bought. Cheap for every story.

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Complete-Sh...goryZ377QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


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## IHT (Dec 27, 2003)

i just won them a few months back on ebay as well, the complete stories... i think i'm on the 4th story now... been too busy to read.


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## Mad Hatter (Apr 8, 2007)

I just got a leatherbound Franklin Mint copy of Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes on Ebay a couple weeks ago. I think the end price was like $33. I haven't read any of it yet.


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## Tredegar (Nov 27, 2007)

I have the original illustrated Sherlock Holmes and consider it one of my favorite books. Still miss the Sherlock Holmes adventures they had on A&E.


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## JacksonCognac (Nov 12, 2007)

As an update last night I purchased a copy of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume I. I got it for $4 and I'm hoping to get a lot of great summer reading out of it.


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## squeeze left (Jun 28, 2006)

Glad to hear you all are enjoying (or will be enjoying) Dr. Watson's account of Holmes's bizarre and compelling adventures!

My copy is a leatherbound edition I picked up for $15 at the local Barnes and Noble. I especially like it because it has the ribbon you use as a bookmark.


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## Sawyer (Jul 11, 2007)

If you can't find them as cheaply as some have stated, you can download them for free from Project Gutenberg since they are no longer copyrighted works. I have been reading and listening from that site. They are nice for light reading sessions or even relaxing and just listening.


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## CigarGal (Jun 2, 2006)

Holmes is the best! I have always been a big fan and when I wrote my novel Conan Doyle was one of the characters-I had so much fun researching and writing the story.

I hope we see more quotes on this thread.


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## Mr.Lordi (May 20, 2007)

I am not sure if there is an Arthur Conan Doyle book, but Library of America puts out beautiful copies of books of works that should be preserved.

I have the H.P. Lovecraft book in that series and it's a awesome little book. Great binding and paper that they use. Well worth the 20 bucks they cost.


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## CigarGal (Jun 2, 2006)

Mr.Lordi said:


> I am not sure if there is an Arthur Conan Doyle book, but Library of America puts out beautiful copies of books of works that should be preserved.
> 
> I have the H.P. Lovecraft book in that series and it's a awesome little book. Great binding and paper that they use. Well worth the 20 bucks they cost.


Lovecraft was American and possibly the Library of America only puts in print American authors.


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## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

Mr.Lordi said:


> I am not sure if there is an Arthur Conan Doyle book, but Library of America puts out beautiful copies of books of works that should be preserved.
> 
> I have the H.P. Lovecraft book in that series and it's a awesome little book. Great binding and paper that they use. Well worth the 20 bucks they cost.


Ooh! I wish I would have seen that before placing my amazon order.


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## Mr.Lordi (May 20, 2007)

CigarGal said:


> Lovecraft was American and possibly the Library of America only puts in print American authors.


I know, but I thought they put one out of Dickens, but I could be wrong on that.

EDIT: I am googling it now.

EDIT:I was wrong. Bah! either way, if you want to read classic American lit as well, you can't do much better then the LOA series IMO.


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## CigarGal (Jun 2, 2006)

gotta love google...what did you find?


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## Mr.Lordi (May 20, 2007)

CigarGal said:


> gotta love google...what did you find?


I found out I was wrong, and edited the above post to reflect that. lol

EDIT:
Literary Criticism: Volume One: Essays on Literature, American Writers and English Writers
Matching titles: Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend"

this is the closet they had to a result on there site.


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## CigarGal (Jun 2, 2006)

At least it is easy to find good editions of the collection on e-bay and amazon. The annotated version is very nice. I need to dig mine out and look for some quotes as well.


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## Arizona (Jul 19, 2007)

I LOVE the Sherlock Holmes stories. Over the years I've read most if not all of them and yes I do enjoy the smoking scenes where he'll puff an "old briar pipe" typically. Every story has at least one such mention in it seemingly. 

No matter how many times I read these stories I always enjoy them.


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## paperairplane (Nov 8, 2007)

I got the illustrated version with the original typeset and sketches - found it at B&N on sale for under $10.

"Then he lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue smoke rings as they chased each other up to the ceiling."


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## squeeze left (Jun 28, 2006)

Hi all,

I am so pleased to find other Holmes enthusiasts here! Here's a scene from "The Sign of the Four." This time, it's not Sherlock smoking, but rather "a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald , shining scalp which shot out from amoung it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees":

----------------

"We were all astonished. . . . The carpet was of amber and black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly into it, as into a bed of moss. Two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it increased the suggestion of Eastern luxury, as did a huge hookah which stood upon a mat in the corner. . . As it burned it filled the air with a subtle and aromatic odour."

. . .

[Mr. Thaddeus Sholto] said, "I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We all three sat in a semicircle, with our heads advanced and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in the centre."

. . .

"Mr. Thaddeus Sholto looked from one to the other of us with an obvious pride at the effect which his story had produced and then continued between puffs of his overgrown pipe."

. . .

[When we left he] "very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah."

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I thought this one evokes some great imagery as well as the rituals we all seem to build around tobacco.

Dave


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## JacksonCognac (Nov 12, 2007)

From what you have shown us, I really like Doyle's writing style. I am looking forward to reading these stories!


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## mcdevster (May 31, 2008)

So the games afoot ayy??
Yeah Arthur Conan Doyle's writing is very fun.. and Sherlock has to be one of the most eccentric characters in the whole of literature.. 
I bought the Barnes and Noble two volume edition of the complete works... and I am slowly plugging away at it.. the great thing about sherlock is you can put him down and pick him up later... just pleasant reading.


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## squeeze left (Jun 28, 2006)

*How to deduce a man's character from his pipe*

Hi all, and thanks for the comments, much appreciated. I'm still liking Mr. Holmes's style here, as he finds a pipe left behind in his quarters by an unknown visitor in "The Yellow Face." BTW, there I couldn't find anything currently available called "Grosvenor mixture"; surprising given the number of blenders out there that nobody's come up with one:

 "Hullo! that's not your pipe on the table [Watson]. He must have left his behind him. A nice old brier with a good long stem of what the tobacconists call amber. I wonder how many real amber mouthpieces there are in London? Some people think that a fly in it is a sign. Well, he must have been disturbed in his mind to leave a pipe behind him which he evidently values highly."<o></o>

"How do you know that he values it highly?" I asked.

"Well, I should put the original cost of the pipe at seven and sixpence. Now it has, you see, been twice mended, once in the wooden stem and once in the amber. Each of these mends, done, as you observe, with silver bands, must have cost more than the pipe did originally. The man must value the pipe highly when he prefers to patch it up rather than buy a new one with the same money."<o></o>
. . .<o></o>
"Pipes are occasionally of extraordinary interest," said he. "Nothing has more individuality, save perhaps watches and bootlaces. The indications here, however, are neither very marked nor very important. The owner is obviously a muscular man, left-handed, with an excellent set of teeth, careless in his habits, and with no need to practise economy."<o></o>
. . .<o></o>
"You think a man must be well-to-do if he smokes a seven-shilling pipe?" said I.<o></o>

"This is Grosvenor mixture at eightpence an ounce," Holmes answered, knocking a little out on his palm. "As he might get an excellent smoke for half the price, he has no need to practise economy."<o></o>

"He has been in the habit of lighting his pipe at lamps and gasjets. You can see that it is quite charred all down one side. Of course a match could not have done that. Why should a man hold a match to the side of his pipe? But you cannot light it at a lamp wihtout getting the bowl charred. And it is all on the right side of the pipe. From that I gather that he is a left handed man. . . . Then he has bitten through his amber. It takes a muscular, energetic fellow, and one with a good set of teeth, to do that."


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